Wikileaks: Annoyed Politburo Member Reason For Google's China Exit

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Yup, Wikileaks did, in fact, leak yet another series of documents at the weekend, just as many had predicted. This time around the documents are more of a diplomatic nature, that is, their leak has the US Department of State looking quite foolish. Der Spiegel writes: “Never before in history has a superpower lost control of such vast amounts of such sensitive information—data that can help paint a picture of the foundation upon which US foreign policy is built.” It turns out that there’s at least one bit of information in the leak that would be of interest to y’all, and it has to do with Google’s relationship with China.

We should keep in mind that Wikileaks hasn’t released all of the documents to be found in this dump quite yet. Who knows what kind of techno-hilarity we can look forward to? Maybe a snipe at the French for not knowing the difference between their iPhone and their something else, or maybe some low-level staffer reveals how he used his meager influence to snag a Spotify account for his gal-pal?

Diplomatic intrigue!

But back to the Google-China story.

It would seem that the whole reason why Google had to leave China was because a top guy at the Politburo is a bit thin skinned.

The story goes that a “senior member” of Communist Party of China’s Politburo googled himself on the international (that is, non-Chinese) version of Google. He was then shocked to find articles criticizing him by name. By name! Surely that can’t stand, right?

Right. From here, so says the Wikileaks dump, all those China-based attacks on Google’s servers began, eventually causing Google to pull out.

There’s also word that the US was instructed to engage in a bit of cyber espionage against UN officials. This would include details of “private VIP networks used for official communication, to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, [and] personal encryption keys.”

Those are the two big tech stories I’ve seen so far. There’s sure to be more if and when Wikileaks makes the rest of the dump available.